isp – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchSat, 17 Feb 2018 13:00:39 +0000en-UShourly1Scammers defraud TalkTalk users after UK ISP suffers data breachhttp://gigaom.com/2015/02/27/scammers-defraud-talktalk-users-after-uk-isp-suffers-data-breach/
http://gigaom.com/2015/02/27/scammers-defraud-talktalk-users-after-uk-isp-suffers-data-breach/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 09:55:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=917623The personal details of a number of TalkTalk customers have been stolen. In some cases, the details have been used to scam further information such as bank details from the victims.

TalkTalk is one of the biggest British internet service providers, with more than four million broadband customers. In an email to its customers, the ISP admitted to the breach late last year and said “a small, but nonetheless significant” number of its customers had been contacted by people pretending to be from TalkTalk.

According to a spokesman, the data was taken from TalkTalk’s systems, and the scammers quoted TalkTalk account numbers and phone numbers in order to convince victims to provide access to their computers. TalkTalk’s email suggested that this sometimes yielded sensitive information such as bank details, adding that “in some of these cases we know they may be using the information they have illegally obtained.”

It is so far not terribly clear how many customers’ data was stolen in the first place.

The Guardian reported that this admission lined up with its report in December of a possible data breach associated with one of TalkTalk’s Indian centers, which had resulted in some of the firm’s customers receiving scam calls. It also noted that one customer had been defrauded of more than $4,000 by the scammers.

TalkTalk stressed that bank account details and other sensitive information such as date of birth had not been stolen directly in the breach. In a statement, it said:

As part of our ongoing approach to security we continually test our systems and processes and following further investigation into these reports, we have now become aware that some limited, non-sensitive information about some customers could have been illegally accessed in violation of our security procedures. We are aware of a small, but nonetheless significant, number of customers who have been directly targeted by these criminals and we have been supporting them directly.

The ISP also said it was talking to the Information Commissioner’s Office – the British data protection regulator – and has “taken serious steps to remedy this.” The ICO said in a statement: “We are aware of a possible data breach involving TalkTalk and are making enquiries into the circumstances.”

This article was updated at 2.30am PT to amend “the data was taken from TalkTalk’s servers” to “the data was taken from TalkTalk’s systems”, per a correction from the spokesman. It was updated again at 3.30am PT to include the ICO’s brief statement.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2015/02/27/scammers-defraud-talktalk-users-after-uk-isp-suffers-data-breach/feed/1Delta to install Gogo’s faster in-flight internet in 250 planeshttp://gigaom.com/2015/02/25/delta-to-install-gogos-faster-in-flight-internet-in-250-planes/
Wed, 25 Feb 2015 15:41:59 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=917097Next year Delta Airlines flyers will start noticing their sluggish inflight internet connections getting a lot faster. Delta announced on Wednesday that it is upgrading more than 250 planes that fly its long-haul domestic, Latin America and Caribbean routes with Gogo’s new 2Ku connectivity, boosting overall broadband capacity on its planes to 70 Mbps.

I say capacity, not speed, because 70 Mbps is the connection to the airplane, which [company]Gogo[/company] in turn divides up among passengers who pay for the service, just as your home Wi-Fi router splits your broadband connection to all of your devices. Still, 70 Mbps is a huge improvement over Gogo’s current service, which essentially uses a meager 3 Mbps 3G connection to serve an entire cabin full of passengers.

2Ku supplements Gogo’s ground-to-air network – essentially a CDMA network pointed at the sky – with satellite capacity from SES and Intellisat. Upgrading to 2Ku requires an aircraft retrofit, however, so the airlines are only gradually moving over to the new service. Gogo says it now has six airlines either trialing or committed to deploying 2Ku on a total of 300 planes.

[company]Virgin Atlantic[/company] has already signed up for 2Ku, but [company]Delta[/company] is the first major domestic airline customer to hop on board. The airline will upgrade its first aircraft in 2016, though overhauling all 250 planes will take several years. Delta said it plans to equip new international aircraft with 2Ku as they enter its fleet.

Gogo hasn’t revealed any details on pricing yet, and it may choose to charge a premium over its already expensive rates to tap the faster network. That might be a turn-off for some people, but the typical Gogo user tends to be a business traveller whose company foots the bill.

]]>Gogo issues fake security certificates to block in-flight streaminghttp://gigaom.com/2015/01/05/gogo-issues-fake-security-certificates-to-block-in-flight-streaming/
Mon, 05 Jan 2015 21:31:06 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=904249If you’re looking for another reason to hate Gogo, the much-criticized ISP of the skies, then it just provided one. Neowin revealed on Monday that the Gogo is messing with the SSL (secure socket layer) certificates issued by websites to encrypt traffic coming to and from your browser.

According to Neowin, [company]Google[/company] security engineer Adrienne Porter Felt discovered the tactic when surfing Google sites. [company]Gogo[/company] was replacing the SSL certificates she would normally get from Google with the ISP’s own certificates. This is the kind of ploy you’d usually see when a malicious hacker is performing a man-in-the-middle attack. But according to Gogo it’s just using the certificates as a way of identifying video traffic so it can block it over its narrowband air-to-ground network. From a statement by Gogo EVP and CTO Anand Chari:

“… we have stated that we don’t support various streaming video sites and utilize several techniques to limit/block video streaming. One of the recent off-the-shelf solutions that we use proxies secure video traffic to block it. Whatever technique we use to shape bandwidth, it impacts only some secure video streaming sites and does not affect general secure internet traffic. These techniques are used to assure that everyone who wants to access the Internet on a Gogo equipped plane will have a consistent browsing experience.”

Considering passengers on most Gogo planes today are sharing the equivalent of a single 3G connection, keeping video off the inflight wireless network is probably a good policy – instead of a bunch of crappy connections you’d get no connections at all. But the way Gogo is enforcing that policy by breaking the security of sites is, as The Verge puts it, “a terrible idea for everyone involved.”

]]>Swedish ISP protects customers from surveillance with free VPNhttp://gigaom.com/2014/11/17/swedish-isp-protects-customers-from-surveillance-with-free-vpn/
Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:51:44 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=889443Last month I reported on the case of Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP that is resisting the country’s revival of its data retention law. Bahnhof CEO John Karlung said at the time that he had a “Plan B” in mind that would mitigate the effects of storing customer data for the benefit of spies and law enforcement, and here it is: free VPN.

On Sunday, Bahnhof said it would comply with a court’s November 24 deadline for storing customers’ communications data — in particular, details of which websites they’re visiting — but would at the same time start giving all those customers a way to anonymize their traffic, in the form of free access to a virtual private network called LEX Integrity.

As a result, the data Bahnhof will collect (and store in its ex-nuclear-bunker data center) will become meaningless for the purpose of surveillance — assuming customers take up the offer.

The VPN will be run by a digital rights group called the 5th of July Foundation, which noted in a Sunday blog post that, not being an ISP, Sweden’s data retention law doesn’t force it to store customer data:

When a Bahnhof customer wants to surf via our servers they connect via PPTP. We at the foundation have no idea about who these customers are. We do not have any information about them, no name or address. We just check whether this (for us) unknown surfer should be permitted to connect via our servers…

The Foundation uses its own hardware and own technicians. Bahnhof has no access to our machines, they have no way of knowing what their customers are doing after handing them over to our servers.

Sweden’s data retention law was based on an EU-wide law that has since been struck down on privacy grounds. The country first reacted to that striking-down, in April this year, by removing its requirement that ISPs help authorities snoop on their customers, but then its government managed to get the requirement back in force.

Bahnhof, which has complained to the European Commission that the law is illegal, was the last of the ISPs to resist the requirement’s return.

]]>Will the FCC be tempted by AT&T’s suggestion of internet ‘fast lanes’ run by users?http://gigaom.com/2014/10/07/will-the-fcc-be-tempted-by-atts-suggestion-of-internet-fast-lanes-run-by-users/
http://gigaom.com/2014/10/07/will-the-fcc-be-tempted-by-atts-suggestion-of-internet-fast-lanes-run-by-users/#commentsTue, 07 Oct 2014 18:01:03 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=878858The FCC is caught between two controversial proposals as it struggles to write new rules for the internet. One proposal, which would allow paid “fast lanes” for certain websites, is wildly unpopular with the public while the other, which calls for treating internet providers like a public utility, is radioactive to powerful industry groups.

Faced with this no-win dilemma, a compromise would be most welcome for the beleaguered agency. And, as it happens, AT&T says it has just the thing in the form of “user driven” fast lanes that, in theory, could preserve the principles of an open internet without leading industry groups to throw a fit over regulations. But not everyone is convinced.

Fast lanes driven by users

AT&T suggests the solution to the FCC’s internet dilemma lies with “user driven prioritization” schemes for internet traffic that would “empower consumers.”

In plain English, this appears to mean that some websites could reach consumers via fast lanes — allowing their content to move at express speeds — but only if consumers have first designated those websites for such treatment. Alternately, it could be interpreted as a way to allow some types of applications, such as video or VOIP, to come in faster than others.

The telco giant first floated this idea in July, but it has also met with the FCC twice in the last month to talk it up further. One of these meetings resulted in a public letter, flagged by National Journal, that described a visit to the agency.

The letter’s appearance may simply be a nod to transparency, but it may also represent a trial balloon to gauge public reaction to the idea of “user-driven” fast lanes — and to see if that reaction is any different to the angry blowback the FCC received after proposing its own fast lane concept in May.

On its face, this alternate fast lane scheme could prove more palatable since it implies that it will be consumers, not the likes of Comcast, who will have final control of the switch. In practice, it might mean that parents could use these controls to prioritize email traffic over Netflix traffic in their house.

Meanwhile, a variation of “user-driven” priority lanes also enjoys qualified support from Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford law professor and intellectual heavyweight in the net neutrality debate. In an academic paper, she explained:

Under this approach, a network provider would not be allowed to treat Vonage differently from Skype, or Comcast’s XfinityTV.com differently from Hulu. That would be discrimination based on application. Nor would it be allowed to treat online video differently from e-mail, treat applications that use the BitTorrent protocol differently from applications that do not use this protocol, or treat latency-sensitive applications differently from latency-insensitive applications.

But is this also what AT&T envisions? It’s hard to say. According to a Gigaom Research analyst, the company’s plan would likely put the consumer in control at the end of the fast lanes, but also set off a behind-the-scenes scramble by content providers to construct such lanes in the first place.

AT&T itself hasn’t elaborated on how exactly its “user-driven prioritization” would work, though a source close to the company suggested that the plan would let the FCC uphold “open internet” principles without invoking the so-called Title II classification (for public utilities) that the industry opposes.

Solution or slippery slope?

It’s easy to see how a net neutrality solution based on user-driven fast lanes would appeal to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: if seems to offer a way to placate everyone by upholding open internet principles, while using a light regulatory touch. But is it too good to be true?

“These sort of compromises are always very attractive to policy makers if they can get them,” said Harold Feld of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. “Politically, could it provide enough cover for those who want this issue to go away? It might.”

In a phone interview, Feld suggested that AT&T has long been shrewd out at staking out what seems to be middle ground, and positioning itself as a reasonable voice on controversial issues. But he is skeptical that the company’s proposal differs significantly from the FCC’s initial fast lane proposal from May, and described them as “just fast lanes with an opt-in.”

Feld’s colleague, John Bergmayer, also cautioned that the AT&T plan appears to permit internet providers to control the switch at deeper points of the internet, and exert unfair leverage over companies like Netflix:

“AT&T and the public interest community have a very different idea of what constitutes “user-directed.” In AT&T’s version, they would still charge edge providers—but then users would opt in the the new fast lane. This still maintains the problematic features of a two-sided market. Any user-directed prioritization should not include an exchange of value between the edge provider and the last-mile ISP.”

In other words, AT&T’s offer to help solve the FCC’s dilemma through “user-driven prioritization” may amount to an offer of political cover, but one that doesn’t include meaningful legal or technical assurances.

That doesn’t mean the FCC won’t reach for it all the same, however. Few in Washington think that the FCC Chair is willing to antagonize powerful interests by going the public utility route — leaving him with the hard task of deciding how to package the fast lane rules in the least unpopular way.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/10/07/will-the-fcc-be-tempted-by-atts-suggestion-of-internet-fast-lanes-run-by-users/feed/4Mobile ISP Karma plans a move into home broadbandhttp://gigaom.com/2014/09/25/mobile-isp-karma-plans-a-move-into-home-broadband/
Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:39:37 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=876099Virtual broadband operator Karma announced this week that it will soon be making the leap from WiMAX to LTE with a new mobile hotspot, but that isn’t the full of extent of the NYC startup’s wireless broadband plans.

Karma no longer wants to be merely a mobile internet provider; it wants to be the primary internet connection for its consumer customers, and that means it will have to make the leap from being a mobile ISP to a residential ISP, according to CEO and co-founder Steven van Wel.

“We want to focus on being your only source of internet connectivity,” van Wel said in a recent interview.

Van Wel didn’t go into specifics since the product is still in the planning stages. If Karma keeps with its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) roots, though, it will most likely offer a wireless home router that taps into its network partner Sprint’s LTE signals. That would allow it to offer a more powerful connection at a cheaper cost per gigabyte, which van Wel acknowledged would be key to making Karma a replacement for a traditional ISP.

Karma’s LTE hotspot is pocket-sized and easily portable, but Karma may well have a more powerful router planned for your home (source: Karma)

There’s already precedent among Karma’s fellow Sprint MVNOs. FreedomPop offers a residential wireless internet service giving 1 GB of data away for free each month and offering paid plans that include up to 10 GBs per month. 10 GBs is a pretty paltry sum if you’re streaming video to your TV and networking multiple computers, but FreedomPop isn’t going after the heavy broadband user. Instead, it’s targeting the budget-conscious user who needs a connection to surf at home.

That’s likely the same way Karma will approach the home broadband market. Right now most of Karma’s 100,000 customers are using its service as a kind of internet backup when on the go, van Wel said. When open Wi-Fi isn’t available they pull out their hotspot and continue working and playing online. The data you buy on Karma’s network never expires – a gigabyte costs $14, and after you use it up you buy another for $14 – so it’s perfectly suited to that kind of backup use case.

But van Wel wants Karma to be thought of as more than just a backup. In an email exchange, he wrote:

We feel that wifi is something personal. Something we are all hungry for 24/7. To solve that Karma aims to become part of your daily ritual. Like your keys, wallet and phone. With wireless speeds getting faster and faster – and data should be cheaper – we see a future where wireless will replace fixed. Just like your mobile phone replaced the landline connection over a decade ago. It’s (almost) time to get rid of multiple subscriptions to get connected.

By placing more emphasis on personal broadband, though, Karma is placing less emphasis on the community broadband concept it originally used to launch its service. Karma doesn’t just sell bulk data that you can only use on your own hotspot. It has divorced the connection from the mobile plan, meaning you can connect to any Karma’s customers router. So if you’re out and about without your hotspot, you can ride over someone else’s Karma connection while consuming your megabytes rather than your host’s.

Van Wel said Karma is still a big backer of open Wi-Fi and the broadband commons movement, and it will continue to let customers connect to each other’s hotspots. Shared connections are big source of new customers for Karma as it gives out 500MBs gratis to any user the first time they to hotspot. But if Karma is going to abandon the perception of a being a supplemental service, van Wel said, then it will have to put more devices in customers hands and encourage them to carry those devices wherever they go.

]]>The Bay Area gets the European internet exchange model Netflix hopes will spreadhttp://gigaom.com/2014/09/10/the-bay-area-gets-the-european-internet-exchange-model-netflix-hopes-will-spread/
Wed, 10 Sep 2014 18:46:45 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=872126The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) said today that it’s establishing an internet access point in the San Francisco facility of Digital Reality, a collocated data center provider. With the new point of presence (POP), AMS-IX is bringing its European internet exchange model, one that Netflix supports, to the Bay Area.

Last December, [company]Netflix[/company] became the first customer of AMS-IX’s New York facility, which was a big deal because that signaled the rise of the European internet exchange model in the U.S., something Netflix has supported.

In this type of model, the internet exchanges—the places where the networks of ISPs, content providers, telecoms, and others congregate to swap traffic—are owned by all the members that participate; this could possibly account for the reason why European cross-connect prices are way lower than what you see in the U.S. in which data center owners like Equinix or the ISPs can dictate the pricing scheme without having to deal with the rest of the participants.

At the same time, Netflix has been leading the charge on Open-IX, the open internet exchange model and non-profit that wants to make sure companies can’t monopolize these internet exchanges.

Sure, we predicted this, and the Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger is predicated on this, but the dynamic between video and broadband is a great example of watching giant companies try to balance the costs of providing new services while still keeping the margins of the previous service. Call it a pivot of sorts, or changing the engines while a jet is flying, but ISPs have been making these transitions for years.

What’s happening is that as customers find more entertainment value in broadband — either because they are spending all night on Reddit or because they are streaming movies via Netflix or Apple’s iTunes — they are increasingly questioning the value of the cable package. And while these people may not be the dreaded cord cutters or cord nevers, they may attempt to cut the costs of cable by going for an economy package or signing up for service and then dropping it a few months later.

This puts cable companies and telco providers in a bind. To keep subscribers happy they need to cut the costs of their pay TV packages, but they need to do it in such a way that they don’t end up on the wrong side of the negotiating table when it comes to making deals with the content companies. Time Warner Cable had this problem as it emphasized broadband and started making expensive and bottom-line hurting deals with sports and content providers.

The times they are a changing

Fewer video customers means lower programming costs (which are paid on a per subscriber basis) and servicing the video product tends to be the most challenging and costly part of the business, so margins could benefit from the mix shift. But an eroding subscriber base for video also poses risks. Companies with a dwindling number of video subscribers lose economies of scale when it comes to technicians and customer service, driving up costs per customer. And a company’s brand may suffer if it seems to be giving up on video in favor of broadband.

With pay TV the faltering engine in the ISP plane, understanding how it plans to change it and keep flying becomes worthwhile. ISP executives have known this moment was coming, which is why many of them initially started rolling out broadband caps and the concept of tiered service all the way back in 2008. Getting customers to pay more for using more data as opposed to merely paying more per month for higher speeds was the first step in making sure that as the old engine started to weaken, the new one was ready to rev up. Customers who dumped pay TV to stream video would have to pay more, and those who didn’t yet stream everything would become accustomed to the idea that broadband wasn’t an infinite resource. And when they too reached that ceiling, they would be fine paying up.

Comcast Xfinity’s TV service.

You belong to me

If caps made sure the new engine was raring to go, then economy packages that lower subscribers’ costs and long-term contracts were used to make sure the old engines sputter out rather than exploding. Contracts are pretty simple to explain. They lock a customer in on both the broadband and pay TV side for a year or more at a certain promotional rate. Customers who bail may face a termination fee. In many cases it’s tough for a customer to even sign up for a month-to-month broadband package.

For example, when I was switching to AT&T, I was told by an online chat agent that Uverse service wasn’t offered on a month-to-month contract and that she couldn’t help me online; I’d need to call. When I called, the agent was happy to provide me with a month-to-month broadband-only package. However, if I has signed the contract I would have been on the hook for a $180 termination fee, a powerful disincentive for canceling services early. Comcast is a bit less draconian, merely offering a 12-month contracted rate that shoots up if the customer changes the terms of their service. In using contracts, ISPs are ensuring a customer and revenue stream even as the landscape for buying both television and even broadband is changing.

Make you feel my love

Also yesterday Michael Greeson, an analyst with The Diffusion Group, told his story about signing up for cable again after three years as a cord cutter. Basically he had broadband from Comcast and the ability to get basic TV for free over his coaxial cable. When Comcast noticed that we was getting basic TV, it started charging him $25 a month for the service. He later called up and got faster broadband and the basic TV he wanted all for the same price I actually pay for month-to-month 50 Mbps broadband from AT&T.

He wrote:

[blockquote person=”” attribution=””]The decision to buy into this service combination at this price was easy, but I had to ask for it (operators are not overly willing to sell this package unless is it a ‘last resort’). I’m not a big sports viewer at home, so the fact that ESPN was not included did not make the offering any less compelling (I get my sports fix from regular broadcast or from the local sports pub). By not including ESPN and other sports-centric channels, however, Comcast was able to offer a basic package of cable channels with 50 Mbps broadband at a very reasonable cost. It was the right combination of content at the right price. Remember, I was originally searching for faster broadband, not a new tier of cable TV service.

Another cord cutter has been drawn back into the fold….[/blockquote]

Together the combination of caps, contracts and cost reductions are helping cable companies transition from being in the pay TV business to being in the broadband business while attempting to keep their margins intact. It’s a thin line, but it’s one that its rivals in the telco world walked a few years ago as they transitioned from wireline voice to mobile services.

What will be interesting to watch though, is how well the incumbents here handle the offerings from newer rivals such as Google or municipal networks. That might make it trickier for cable companies to keep flying at the same level.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/07/25/holding-onto-the-triple-play-how-costs-caps-and-contracts-will-keep-isps-flush/feed/5Amazon Fire TV bug provides another reason why data caps are anti-consumerhttp://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/amazon-fire-tv-bug-provides-another-reason-why-data-caps-are-anti-consumer/
http://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/amazon-fire-tv-bug-provides-another-reason-why-data-caps-are-anti-consumer/#commentsMon, 30 Jun 2014 22:11:57 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=854446As Comcast sets itself up to merge with Time Warner Cable’s broadband subscribers, which could result in almost four out of five US broadband subscribers getting some kind of data cap, an Amazon Fire TV user just provided us with yet another reason why caps are so problematic for the average person.

As my colleague Mathew Ingram and at least one game developer have also discovered, broadband caps turn consumers into network cops forced to investigate how one of the many dozens of devices in their home might be behaving badly and causing a problem. And even if they can figure out the offending device, they may have little recourse when it comes to stopping the problem.

Earlier this month a freelance writer named Tyler Hayes noticed he had blown through his 250 gigabyte per month data cap by a lot; more than three times over. So he found what he thought was the culprit and then he went to tell the world via social media. Unlike many who flock to the internet to complain, Hayes was right: his Amazon Fire TV was the reason he had consumed 80 GB in one day. But he was wrong about exactly why it had happened.

Tyler Hayes documented the bandwidth increase caused by his Fire TV.

Lucky for Hayes, Amazon is now aware of the problem. It has determined that the cause is not the ASAP recommendation and show caching service that Hayes thought and it is trying to fix the actual bug, which is in an opt-in screensaver function. Amazon offered the following statement when I asked about Hayes’ post:

We have confirmed this issue was not caused by ASAP. A big thanks to this customer for helping us find an edge case bug related to our screensaver. There is a small possibility if a customer uses the “mosaic” feature (not the default setting) on the screensaver images will not be cached. We’re working on a software update that will fix the bug, and in the meantime customers can turn off the mosaic view for the screensaver to avoid the issue. To date, we have not heard about this issue from other customers.

So those of you with a data cap might want to turn off the mosaic function in the screen saver and thank your lucky stars that Amazon cares enough about customer service to solve this issue before your ISP charges overage fees. And while Amazon is behaving correctly here, and while many ISPs offer both grace periods where they won’t charge for overages, as well as notifications as a consumer nears an overage, it still forces the consumer to figure out what went wrong.

Most notices from ISPs when a customer nears a data cap suggest that a teen might be streaming video or some neighbor is siphoning off your Wi-Fi. They don’t instruct users to think about whether they recently bought a new connected device in the last month that might have a software bug. And as more devices are connected, like locks, thermostats and even appliances, the opportunity that those devices might actually consume much more data than advertised rises.

When someone like Amazon is at fault, the consumer will likely be fine. But what happens when a Kickstarter beta or some connected gizmo with shoddy code is the culprit? Then will you be stuck hoping your ISP is in forgiving mood while having paid for a buggy device?

Thanks to our love of connected devices and the increasing prevalence of data cap, caveat emptor may apply in entirely new ways for consumers in the years ahead. If you want to know if you should worry, check our chart to see which ISPs are capping your connection.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/amazon-fire-tv-bug-provides-another-reason-why-data-caps-are-anti-consumer/feed/17The FCC just launched its peering investigation with a call for datahttp://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/the-fcc-just-launched-its-peering-investigation-with-a-call-for-data/
http://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/the-fcc-just-launched-its-peering-investigation-with-a-call-for-data/#commentsFri, 13 Jun 2014 16:40:25 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=849721The Federal Communication Commission has finally acted on the allegations that certain ISPs are intentionally throttling traffic from providers such as Netflix as a way to charge content providers additional fees. Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a statement on Friday noting that the agency has asked for documentation about peering, and it currently has the terms of the agreements signed between Netflix and Verizon and Netflix and Comcast.

This doesn’t mean that the agency will regulate the interconnection agreements between ISP networks and content provider networks, but it does mean that the consumer cry for action on this issue has been heard and the FCC is looking into it. Ideally, the data collected by the FCC will be shared in a somewhat timely manner via a public report or data dump, but that might be too much to hope for given how secretive these agreements are.

However, I am glad Wheeler is taking the action he promised me back in January, when I brought the issue up with him. From a statement issued today:

“To be clear, what we are doing right now is collecting information, not regulating. We are looking under the hood. Consumers want transparency. They want answers. And so do I.

In all of the articles on this topic — which is complicated, but has real implications for consumers because it turns internet capacity into something that more closely resembles cable TV.I’ve called for the FCC to get data so we can understand if there is a problem. Are ISPs abusing their power as the sole provider of last mile connectivity and trying to charge companies like Netflix fees to get onto their networks?

Given that in much of the world interconnection agreements are informal and free (and even in the U.S. many interconnection agreements between big name content providers and ISPs are formal, but unpaid) this is an issue worth scrutiny. And if the FCC finds that the lack of a competitive last-mile broadband market is enabling a few ISPs to behave badly it should act.

But hopefully the threat of greater transparency will be enough to solve this problem.